LITTLE HOMES AND THE BIG HOUSE

Would you be willing to pay $2.5 million for a three-bedroom,
three-bath house with no garage, a small patio and about 600 square
feet of air-conditioned space?

My close encounter with the lifestyle of the wealthy on Florida's
"emerald coast" reminded me that tight quarters can be sumptuous. The
real estate developer who owns the 52-foot yacht described above
lives aboard it for several months each year with his wife and two
young children. They do not feel victimized when sleeping in bedrooms
little larger than some kitchen tables and using "heads" the size of
coat closets.

Around these parts, young families can get a brand new three-bedroom,
two-bath domicile of 1,000 square feet for around $90,000, and that
includes an attached garage, sodded yard and privacy fence. So take
away the twin diesel engines, the fiberglass hull and the
desalinization system (that turns 40 gallons of seawater into pure
drinking water every hour), and that cottage might fetch about
$54,000 in a typical Texas "starter-home" development.

But this would be "slum housing," wouldn't it? Denizens of "nice"
neighborhoods and those who regard themselves as protectors of the
poor might well wonder: Who could possibly subject families to such
inhumane living conditions? Well, the son of one of my wife's
cousins, for one. He's the Florida developer who routinely subjects
his family to such close quarters.

What's luxury for some is considered substandard housing by others.
But doesn't it make sense to permit housing developers to build and
sell small units to those who could not otherwise assume the
responsibility and enjoy the pride of home ownership? And think of
the savings in utilities and insurance for small units with furniture
pre-built into the package, as in luxury yachts.

Housing codes are but one of myriad ways in which governmental
policies adversely affect the poor. And such policies usually have
racial implications. For example, African-Americans have left San
Francisco in droves as "quality-of-life" requirements by the city
have made housing unaffordable for all but the upper crust.

Last week, I discussed the old welfare rules and how they encourage
out-of-wedlock child bearing. I mentioned public school vouchers
(successfully being used in several U.S. cities) as a way to lower
dropout rates and raise test scores among at-risk inner-city students.

Today, in addition to housing codes, I spotlight the war on drugs as
especially onerous for America's poor and minority populations.

Let's stipulate that marijuana, cocaine, heroine and other such
illicit drugs are bad for people. Let's further stipulate that nobody
can claim a constitutional right to use such drugs. So I am not
attempting to show (as I have in other columns over the years) that
most such drugs should be decriminalized.

But having spent more than a trillion dollars to combat bad drugs, we
have a more plentiful supply than ever and a program that has been
disastrous for America's black population.

Consider only the most obvious statistics: Nearly half of state
prisoners incarcerated for drug offenses are black; the incarceration
rate per 100,000 for white men is 717, compared to almost 5,000 for
blacks; among the 2.1 million prisoners in June, 2004, about 576,600
were black males between the ages of 20 and 39.

These drug-dominated incarceration statistics are bad enough by
themselves. But disproportionate incarceration also decreases
minority political clout (some 13 percent of blacks are
disenfranchised felons) and increases fatherless households.

So if I'm not advocating decriminalization, what then? According to
an April 13 report in the Los Angeles Times, California's "6-year-old
program that mandates treatment instead of prison sentences for drug
offenders is dramatically decreasing California's jail population and
saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars." All states should
institute such programs.

Jim Crow laws were designed to hurt African-Americans. But
counterproductive welfare rules, poor school funding policies,
restrictive housing codes and the war on drugs have inflicted far
more damage than either official or "subtle" racism.